typhoid is soooo last century

I get sick – never – so when I fell ill a few weeks ago I didn’t know what to expect and when I felt dodgy in the weeks that followed I didn’t think anything of it, just figured it was the aftereffects of being sick. A few days ago a fever hit and it’s only just occurring to me that I’ve felt like crap for two solid weeks. Still, I figured the fever would pass and focused on ignoring the uncontrollable shaking, cold clammy skin, sweat drenched clothes, and being insufferably hot quickly followed by being impossibly cold. Then a few nights ago I woke up to discover that I had been shaking so hard that I’d knocked a crown out and it struck me that this might be a bit more than "the chills". The next morning I went to the hospital to see a Doctor and get some bloodwork done.

It was SO not fun. Imagine a very busy Indian train station but with less organization and imagine navigating that while you’re sick. I ignored the hands pushing money past me, paid to consult with a doctor, waited 1.5 hours for him to return from rounds and received a prescription for a battery of tests. Then the real waiting began, five long hours of it. Bloodwork was first. I was weak and tired and getting shaky again. It took two hours to get in, have my veins repeatedly jab jab jabbed (thin veins madam, very thin veins), and faint. I’m not a fainter but I had the idea that at home people put their heads between their knees when light headed; here it seems that the custom is to keep yourself upright, it was a very bad time to learn this cultural difference. I kept trying to put my head down between my knees and concerned hands kept rushing forward, catching my face with a smack and pushing my head back to the wall with a thunk, holding me there. It sucked.

I freed myself from the blood ladies and navigated my way to my next set of tests where I joined the non-line of people packed outside the room and prayed that somehow somewhere there was order to the chaos. There was nowhere to sit so I staked my claim on a corner of the wall and started waiting – and shaking. After 45 minutes of clinging to the wall shaking violently, my legs started to give out and I began sinking to the ground at which point people took notice. One of the Sisters rushed over and stabbed me in the behind with a needle of something which helped with both the shaking and the waiting, I think they were so freaked out by the fainting, convulsing foreigner that they dumped me into the room almost immediately.

Before I even talked I’d disappointed the ultrasound man with my very empty bladder. No one told me to keep a full bladder and no one told me I was getting an ultrasound or I’d have known to do so on my own. I lay there, answering for the millionth time that I was single, no, no husband, and listened to them talk about my faulty ovaries over my head – because nothing makes women of a ‘certain age’ feel better than repeatedly asserting her status as a spinster while listening to doomsday talk about the possibility that she’ll ever have children. If I weren’t already shaking, the vision of dying alone and being eaten by my cat would have kickstarted the process.

Tests were done, many prescriptions given to cover the days until the results came in, and the Doctor's repeated requests that I check myself in were blithely ignored. Why you ask? Because I'm an idiot. I figured things couldn’t be that bad and as someone who doesn’t even take aspirin, I didn't even plan filling the prescriptions. I got myself in a rickshaw, got myself home and spent the night shaking uncontrollably while calling for my roommate of 10 years ago. The next day a friend with far more sense than I brought me to the OTHER private hospital (hallelujia) where I was to spend the next week.

Typhoid. I had typhoid. Such a very cool name for such a very uncool illness.